Scary Stories
by A Philosopher with a Pen
Summary: At the first annual SOS Brigade Halloween Campout, everyone is required to tell a scary story, but the place they camp-out ends up being more frightening than the stories. But is it Haruhi's fault? Meant to mimic a chapter from the light novels
1. Chapter 1

In commemoration/anticipation of the second season of Haruhi Suzumiya, I've decided to write another story. I have another, longer story I may write in the future, though that depends on the reception of this one and time restraints. I hope you guys enjoy it.

Scary Stories

"We're going to celebrate Halloween!" Haruhi yelled, jumping up from her place at the computer and startling the beautiful quiet of the clubroom.

I wasn't really surprised by her declaration. She had been moping around the clubroom for the last week, staring at the computer screen just searching for something adventurous. Yesterday I noticed she was visiting a page covered in pumpkins, so I could only assume she was planning something Halloween-related. I mean, what else do you use pumpkins for?

I glanced around the room for a moment to see if anyone else would protest with me. Nagato-san was sitting in the corner, still reading her book, completely unmoved by Haruhi's sudden outburst. There would be no protest from her.

Asahina-san was scrambling to clean up the tea she had spilt all over the table when Haruhi screamed out her new scheme, and I doubted she had even heard what it was we would be celebrating.

And of course, Koizumi was sitting across from the table from me, smiling like he thought it was the greatest idea ever.

"What's the point of the five of us dressing up and going around the town? We'll be the only ones, so no one's going to give us candy. We're too old for that, and we'll just look stupid," I said.

"Idiot," Haruhi whispered. She grabbed her things and started walking to the door. I wondered for a moment if she was really mad about what had I said, but then she stopped, turned to look directly at me, and shouted, "Halloween's about being scared!"

Then she left.

I didn't really think much about the whole episode that night. I figured I would receive some kind of strange, disproportionate punishment for my objection the following day, and I also assumed we would be running around town in costumes come Halloween night despite what I wanted.

But Haruhi was late showing up to the clubroom the next day--so late, in fact, that the rest of us were about to leave when she came walking in carrying a stack of papers.

"Here is your list of requirements for the first annual SOS Brigade Halloween Campout," she said, tossing the papers to each one of with a frantic excitement reserved only for children and psychopaths. "Be sure you're prepared."

I read the list to myself as Haruhi continued to ramble:

1. Blankets and a pillow to sleep on.

2. Snack foods for the night.

3. A working flashlight.

4. At least one scary story.

I sighed as Haruhi continued to talk. What were we getting into?

Then I noticed that "Costumes are mandatory!!!" was written at the bottom.

"What is this?" I asked.

"This is your new club task," she replied. "We'll meet at the train station at 5:00 pm on October 31. You'll be in costume and have a scary story ready for the night!" She spoke directly to me, probably assuming I would be the one unprepared, which is probably true. Asahina-san wears costumes most of her waking life and Koizumi and Nagato-san will do whatever Haruhi tells them to.

Why am I the only one fighting the power?

"Train station? Where are we going?" I asked, hoping the answer was at least reasonable, though that may be too much to ask with Haruhi.

"That's a secret," she said. I don't like it when Haruhi keeps secrets, because her secrets will likely hurt, both physically and mentally.

"And what's this about stories?" She gave me an evil eye. I was obviously protesting too much for her taste.

"We're going to tell scary stories. Everyone will have to take a turn, so it better be a good one."

"I don't know any scary stories," I complained.

"Then make one up!" With that, Haruhi ended the conversation.

I didn't bother looking around because I knew no one else planned to jump in and say anything. I guess if they don't have a problem with Haruhi toting us off to some unknown location to spend a night telling what would assuredly be mediocre stories, then I don't mind either.

Who am I kidding? I mind. I mind a hell of a lot. I just don't mind enough to bother struggling against the never-ceasing blitzkrieg that is Haruhi Suzumiya.


	2. Chapter 2

There's something about riding around on a train dressed in ridiculous outfits, celebrating a holiday that's not even part of your native culture, and going to some unknown and likely dangerous location that really makes you rethink the decisions you've made in your life.

And that's exactly what I was doing as a multitude of buildings went sweeping by the train window.

I'm sure I look utterly miserable, which is a stark contrast to the sheer elation currently gracing Haruhi's face.

We all showed up as we were told to, and as always, I immediately received a punishment, though not for being late this time. You see, Haruhi didn't like my costume.

And I went through such trouble preparing it.

Actually, all I did was pick up a pair of fake vampire teeth and put on my regular high school uniform. When I arrived at the train station, I could see the rage already filling Haruhi's cheeks.

"What the hell! I said you had to wear a costume!" she yelled.

"I did. I'm a high school vampire," I replied, smiling so she could see my fake plastic teeth for all their fake plastic glory.

"You can't follow a simple order!" she yelled again, drawing the attention of the evening commuters, who were already staring at the group of teenagers screaming and wearing silly costumes.

I'm certain Haruhi yelled some more insults at me, but I didn't really pay attention. I'm used to her chastising me for not following her orders.

What I'm not used to, though, is the sly smile that came over her face when she realized I wasn't listening.

"But luckily," she began, her voice rising to a more self-satisfied pitch, "I figured you would do something like this, so I planned ahead."

As she started digging through her overnight bag, I seriously considered running, just running as far and as fast as I could.

And if I had known what was in store for me, I would have ran, ran, ran.

She pulled out a pair of cat ears and attached them firmly to my head. Then she tied a fake tail to the back of my pants and put a collar with a brass bell on it around my neck.

And there I was, wearing a cat costume.

"Haruhi, I'm not wearing this! I'm a guy!" I said.

"Punishment!" she yelled back, pointing right at my face with her outstretched index finger. "Since you felt like slacking on your costume and showing up as a 'high school vampire,' you'll spend the entire campout wearing this outfit." Then she smiled a little (so evil!). "I guess you're a high school neko-boy now."

Then she laughed.

"And if you try to take it off, you'll suffer an even greater punishment," she added.

What can I say? I submitted. I admit it. I felt ridiculous in the cat ears (which were so small and uncomfortable that they had to have been designed for a girl), but I didn't dare test Haruhi's capacity for coming up with cruel and unusual punishments.

"Let's go," she said, immediately forgetting about me and moving on to her next project.

So after making a spectacle of ourselves and ensuring that I was suffering both mental and emotional pain, we boarded our train and headed off to Haruhi's secret location. Pretty normal SOS Brigade trip if you ask me.

Once aboard, I took a moment to really survey everyone else's costume. Nagato was (unsurprisingly) wearing her witch hat and cape, but because she possesses much greater foresight that I do, she didn't wear her high school uniform underneath as she normally does (who knows what Haruhi might have pulled out of her bag for Nagato?). Today, she had on a set of black pants and a black shirt to better match the cape.

Asahina-san, apparently not understanding the concept of a "scary Halloween" that Haruhi had been attempting to ingrain in us for the last week, came dressed in a light orange princess gown. It was fitting though. Not a single molecule in Asahina-san's perfect body is scary, so trying to dress up like a monster would have been a futile effort. It's much better this way. Much better.

Also, ever since Haruhi had forced my new cat-outfit on me, Asahina-san had been staring at me like she thought I was the cutest thing in the world (the one good outcome of my new neko-boy status). Maybe she'll take me home and adopt me. Please Asahina-san, I need a good home!

I didn't really want to bother looking at Koizumi's outfit, because it was obvious that he had put far too much time and effort into it. He was dressed up like an Oni, complete with ceramic mask and ancient-looking clothing.

Even from behind the mask, I could feel him smiling smugly at me. Kiss ass.

Like Koizumi, Haruhi had gone through a lot of work with her costume. She had on black makeup around the eyes, and her face was smeared with fake blood. She also had what looked like an open head-wound, though I have no idea how she set that up. Her clothes were torn, and she had what could have been either bandages or mummy wrapping going around her right arm.

Frankly, I wasn't sure what she was supposed to be, maybe a zombie, just a plain old corpse, a car crash victim, or a failed mummy. I don't really think she cared, just so long as she looked "scary."

"Your story better be better than your costume," Haruhi said, taking a moment to turn away from the window to criticize me. She's so considerate.

Ah, my story. In the week leading up to this trip, I tried to come up with a story, but then I realized that there is a place where stories already exist. It's called a bookstore, so I went there instead of going through the trouble of creating something terrible that would likely get me in trouble with Haruhi anyways.

I searched through the horror section for about half an hour before I found a manga that seemed scary enough. I bought it and spent the rest of the week memorizing the plot. Now I'm just praying that Haruhi has never heard of it. There's no telling what she'd do to me if I showed up with a terrible costume _and_ a borrowed story.

It's not fair anyway. I'm not a story writer. No-one here is. Even Nagato spent the week reading horror novels, though in her case I'm not sure if she was looking for a story to tell or just researching what scares normal humans. I feel quite confident that she has never felt fear, and if she ever does, then it's time to panic.

"It's a good one," I said, trying not to place a whole lot of emphasis on my story. I didn't want her digging into my sources.

"I'm looking forward to hearing it," Koizumi said, removing his mask as he did so. I kind of wish he'd left it on.

"Uh, huh," I grunted.

"So, where do you think we're going to be spending the night?" he asked. I was about to tell him I didn't know (and didn't care), but then I realized we had the answer sitting in the seat across from us.

"Where are we going, Haruhi?" I asked.

At first I thought she was just going to brush my question off, which is what I expected, but after a moment, I saw her point at something out the window.

"There!" she said.

The four of us gathered around Haruhi to see just what new hell she would be leading us through.

On the other side of the window, resting not that far from the train tracks, was a large abandoned school building.

Great. I always wondered what getting tetanus shots feels like.


	3. Chapter 3

Sometimes I really wonder just how Haruhi's mind works. I wonder how it could see a place as decrepit and overtly dangerous as that abandoned school building and think, "Gosh, this would be a great place to spend the night! Maybe I'll bring my friends."

The first sign that we were getting into something bad was a literal sign, attached to the fence surrounding the building. It used lots of very stern words, such as "Danger!," "no trespassing," "condemned," and "to the fullest extent of the law."

And yet what was Haruhi's reply when I pointed all this out? Well, she promptly tore the sign down and proceeded to crawl through a hole in the mesh fence, one that appeared to be cut recently.

Still to this day I'm impressed by Haruhi's unabashed delinquency.

"Fun and adventure don't obey signs," she said, once standing on the other side.

I really wanted to point out that while fun and adventure might be above the law, the five of us were not, and I _really_ didn't want to get arrested while wearing a cat costume.

But what would be the point. I would be crossing that fence one way or the other, even if it meant Haruhi had to knock me out and toss me over herself.

When we entered the main hall of the building, I immediately noticed the plethora of sharp metal objects and jagged pieces of broken stone cluttering up the floor. To make matters worse, the sun had just set, so we already needed our flashlights just to see where we were going.

I looked at Asahina-san. I hoped the poor clumsy girl would just turn and leave before she suffered the inevitable fall she was bound to take in this place, but even in the dim light of our flashlights, something seemed weird about her. I figured she was just scared. Maybe I'll get lucky and she'll latch onto my arm like she did on the cave trip. I always wanted to lead a princess through a dark and dangerous dungeon.

"I don't think I have all the proper vaccinations to stay the night here, Haruhi," I said, really just wanting to break the silence of the place.

"Vaccinations are for the weak," she replied, still moving forward.

Is that so? I'll call my family physician immediately and let him know about Dr. Suzumiya's new discovery.

Dr. Suzumiya—the idea alone terrifies me.

"I think this will be a perfect place to tell our stories. It has a very creepy atmosphere," Koizumi said, and of course, I hated him for it.

"That's exactly why I chose it," Haruhi said.

No, you chose it because you're insane. Also, you have no sense of danger or compassion for your fellow man. If you disagree, I have pair of cat ears that indicate otherwise.

"What do you think, Nagato-san?" I asked.

As always, Yuki had been walking along silently, obeying all of Haruhi's orders, an alien guarding over her assignment.

"Atmosphere can positively or negatively affect the severity of fear," she replied. I assumed that meant she _had_ been researching what makes people scared.

I was about to ask Nagato-san a follow up question, but Haruhi interrupted.

"That's the spirit, Yuki! That's the reason we're here in the first place." I thought she might go on, but instead she stopped walking. "This is it. This is where we'll sleep."

We didn't really go that far into the building before Haruhi decided on the spot we would be spending the night. It was far enough in that we couldn't see the entrance (and I likely couldn't find it in the dark), but the building went a lot deeper.

The place we settled on was a hallway next to a staircase. I questioned the choice, wondering just why we needed to sleep next to a staircase in a foreign, dark building, but such is the leadership of Haruhi Suzumiya.

We were also near some classrooms, the doors of which were all standing ajar. Part of me kind of wanted to go check the rooms or at least close the doors. Who knows what animals might be living in this place?

But honestly, it wasn't really that scary. I couldn't picture the school as haunted, no matter how hard I tried. You could tell by the building materials and some of the desks that the school wasn't that old, so ghosts were a long shot. I also figured no hideous catastrophe had happened here, like all the students disappearing or some kind of cult sacrificing victims in the basement. If something like that had happened, we would have heard of it, and you can bet Haruhi would have had us out here months ago combing every inch of this place in search of the paranormal.

The building really only ever seemed dangerous, which, while noteworthy, wasn't going to make our stories any better.

I don't think anyone else thought it was scary either. Even Asahina-san, who I expected would be latched on to me by now, was still looking around with a calmness that was uncharacteristic of her. Could it be she actually likes it here?

No, that's impossible. I'm just not seeing things properly in the dark.

After locating a good spot and making sure it was clear of any debris, we laid out what would be our beds for the night, and Haruhi set up a lantern in the middle of the circle so we could turn off our flashlights and still have light to tell the stories by.

I don't know why we didn't bother setting up a campfire. Might as well as burn ourselves while we're in this labyrinth of rust and concrete.

"What Haruhi? No campfire? Or would that be _too dangerous_?" I asked.

One thing I've learned that I just can't seemed to put into action is this: Haruhi doesn't like sarcastic comments, especially when they're mocking _her_.

And somehow, I didn't see her reaction coming. If I had, I could have moved to stop it. She reached over, grabbed my flashlight, and chucked as hard as she could down the nearby flight of stairs.

I could hear the glass shatter and watched the light blink off forever.

"Good luck going to the bathroom in the middle of the night!" she said, obviously feeling very proud of her impulse action. "And that reminds me. Guys have to go outside to use the bathroom."

Hearing that, I sighed, which is apparently also something Haruhi doesn't like.

"And just for that, you have to tell your story first!"


	4. Chapter 4

Let me make this clear: I really didn't want to go first. I'm not a showman, and I don't like having the spotlight on me.

So sitting in front of everyone, the lantern glowing gently, casting our long shadows down the hall of the abandoned school building, I felt nervous, and it didn't help that the story I was about to tell wasn't my own.

I thought about the manga I had lifted my story from and how I had planned to begin. I had rehearsed my story in my head all week as I attempted to memorize all the important details, but none of that information was coming to me now that I needed it.

I took a long sigh, looked at the faces surrounding the lantern, and just started talking.

I did a terrible job. My tone was flat, and I didn't really try to build any suspense. I just told the story, what happened, who it happened to, what happened next. It's a shame too, because the story is actually really good.

The story was about a group of high school students who play a game with rabbits and a wolf. One person is the wolf, and the others are rabbits. It's an innocent game in which the wolf is supposed to whittle down the rabbits while the rabbits all try to figure out who is the wolf in disguise. But someone takes the game too far, and after locking everyone in an abandoned warehouse, real murders start happening.

The original story had suspense and psychological twists that were sadly missing from my rendition.

That didn't seem to matter though. The story still interested the others enough that they didn't fall asleep, and Asahina-san even pulled her blanket up around her shoulders so she could hide her face during the scary parts.

When I finished my tale, Haruhi stared in silence for a long time. I could see her preparing to pass judgment, and even though Koizumi obviously wanted to speak, he held his tongue until Haruhi had made her final declaration. But whatever Koizumi planned to say didn't really concern me. My mind was completely focused on whether or not Haruhi would recognize the story.

"Not bad," she said finally.

I did it! I pulled off borrowing someone else's story without Haruhi knowing.

"Great," Koizumi said, once the conversation was open to anyone. "Very thought-provoking."

"Scary," Asahina-san whimpered, seemingly unable to say anything else.

I looked to Nagato-san, wondering if she might have criticism for me, but she just nodded.

With that over, the rest of the night could play out however. I assumed the worst was over for me.

"Mikuru, you tell your story next," Haruhi said, taking out a bag of snacks as she spoke. I could already tell by her attitude that Haruhi planned to tell her story last.

So we all got out the snacks we were ordered to bring, and after building up a little courage, Asahina-san began her story:

"Once there was a group of teenagers, and they went to explore a graveyard. But the graveyard was haunted by a lot of mean and scary ghosts. And there was a leader ghost named Ganho, and he was the scariest of the ghosts."

At this point Asahina-san stopped, raised her hands in the air, and did a mock growl that was obviously the scariest thing she could muster. I have no clue why her ghosts were growling, and the whole scene only ended up being adorable, the kind of thing toddlers do and grown-ups all smile at and say, "aww."

Don't worry Asahina-san, it will be over soon. Just keep trying.

"But the teenagers made the mistake of going near Ganho's grave, and he got angry and chased them. They ran and ran, but there was a fence, and the teenagers were trapped. 'Ahh!' they all shouted. 'I'm going to eat you!' Ganho shouted back."

Can ghosts eat people? I seriously question the logistics of the entire premise.

"So Ganho grabbed one of them, and he opened his mouth . . . and he . . . and he . . . but he didn't eat them."

For a moment I was convinced Asahina-san had been building suspense, but then I realized she just didn't want to describe the death of one of her hereto unnamed, unnumbered, and ungendered characters.

I looked at Koizumi, who was smiling. I think that, like me, he had expected this.

No emotion from Nagato-san, as always.

Haruhi seemed disappointed, though maybe not angry.

Poor Asahina-san. You're simply not scary. Not at all.

"Then Ganho told them, 'I'll let you go this time,' and the group of teenagers were happy. They decided to leave the graveyard, but then the other ghosts came and said, 'we're going to eat them.' But Ganho wouldn't let them, and he led the teenagers away from the other ghosts to the back gate where they escaped. They thanked him through the bars, and Ganho got to move on and not be a ghost anymore. The end."

Asahina-san, you can't make your scary villain _help_ the good guys!

After hearing Asahina-san's story, I felt much better about my own, stolen or not. At least I gave my characters names and motivations.

"That wasn't very scary, Mikuru," Haruhi said, and Asahina-san lowered her head, shamed that she couldn't live up to Haruhi's definition of "scary Halloween."

I gave Haruhi a nasty glance, which she noticed.

"But it was a good try," she added, and Asahina-san perked up a bit.

"I think there's a lot of potential there," Koizumi said.

"Yeah, Ganho is an interesting character," I said. Is it a lie if it cheers up the cutest girl in the world?

"Really?" Asahina-san asked, looking at me, tears welling up at the corners of her eyes. I nodded.

Don't worry about it, Asahina-san. This campout thing just isn't right for you, and that's probably a good thing.

With the three of us working to cheer her up, Asahina-san eventually got over it. Haruhi ordered us to take a break, which really only consisted of standing up to stretch our legs before the next story.

"Koizumi is next," she decided, and her announcement didn't seem to faze him at all. He remained as confident as ever, and I could tell his story would piss me off.

And I was right.

Koizumi's story was honestly pretty good. It was about a young man who was home alone. He figures out that there is something or someone else in his home, so he locks himself in his room. For the rest of the night, he listens as some monstrous creature screams, insults, threatens to kill the young man's girlfriend, and just generally breaks him down mentally from the other side of the door, constantly trying to get the young man to leave the room. To make it even worse, the phone starts ringing, and each time the boy answers, he's greeted to some new voice telling him some psychologically-damaging lie. And through the windows in his room, he can see a glowing ring of bright white light surrounding his house, and he starts to believe it's the end of the world.

After a full night of this torture, the young man decides to leave his room, letting whatever happens happen, and after a kind of complex ending, it's clear the young man was insane and was actually a kidnapper/murderer himself. The lights outside were the headlights from police vehicles, and the "girlfriend" the demon kept threatening to kill was a girl the young man had kidnapped.

The story was good, but Koizumi really made it work. He knew when to slow down and let the suspense build, and he used plenty of gestures and voices that, unlike Asahina-san's, actually made chills run up my spine.

By the time Koizumi was finished, Asahina-san was quivering under her blanket, and I noticed Haruhi was occasionally glancing around the hallway.

What Haruhi? Regretting your decision to bring us here?

"Great work, Koizumi!" Haruhi said after he was finished.

I didn't say anything, but I went ahead and gave him a nod. Asahina-san and Nagato-san remained silent for their various reasons.

I don't know if he came up with the story himself or stole it from somewhere like me, but he definitely put a lot of time into preparing it. He's such an overachiever.

After Koizumi finished, we took another break. It was getting late, but Haruhi refused to let us sleep until everyone had told their story.

We got settled in and Haruhi announced that Nagato-san would be going next. I expected Nagato-san to tell a story like the one she wrote for that literature club magazine we did a while back--a kind of abstract postmodern piece. Either that or something from one of her novels.

But I never expected the story that she actually told.

"Once there was a girl who was actually a powerful synthetic human. She was ordered to protect four classmates. She protected them, and they thought she was their friend. She showed no emotions, so they didn't know how she really felt. Then one day, they took her camping far away from civilization, and she killed them all in their sleep because she secretly despised them. The end."

Holy shit!

I immediately looked at Koizumi and Asahina-san, who were outwardly showing the same mixture of fear and anxiety I was. Was this a joke? This had to be a joke, right?

"Your story was way too short, Yuki. You've got to draw it out, let the suspense build," Haruhi said. "It's not scary otherwise."

Are you crazy, Haruhi? That story was the scariest thing I've heard all night. Hell, that's the scariest thing I've _ever_ heard.

What kind of books has Nagato-san been researching?

I didn't care what Haruhi thought; I had to ask: "Nagato-san, that story wasn't autobiographical or anything, was it?"

And in the darkness, I saw the corner of her mouth rise just slightly, or at least I thought I did. Was that a smile? Must have been. I don't care that I might have been seeing things in the light of the lantern; I grabbed onto the possibility that Nagato-san smiled at the question, that it was a joke.

I'd never sleep tonight if I truly thought our loyal alien guard secretly hated us and planned to kill us in our sleep because of some unspoken and unexpressed grudge. I'd never sleep _again_ if I thought that.

With everyone else's story out of the way, Haruhi jumped into hers, but I was too distracted examining Nagato-san's face for any clues that would set me at ease. Besides, after filming "The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina," I know that Haruhi's storytelling ability is muddled at best, and that held true for her scary story as well.

"Once there were five high school students who decided to spend the night in an abandoned school building. . ."

Way to start your story out with a cliché, Haruhi. I'm sure no one has ever begun a story like that before.

I listened to just enough to know that the teenagers eventually ran into ghosts in the school building, but I didn't really start paying attention until her tale took one of her signature strange turns and zombies appeared.

Trying to put the pieces together from the sections of her story I didn't listen to, I think the ghosts were the ones making the zombies. I have no idea how that works, but it doesn't really matter. None of Haruhi's stories ever _work_.

Her story eventually ended with only two of them escaping the ghost-zombie-makers. It wasn't really scary, but Koizumi and Asahina-san definitely acted like it was. In Haruhi's defense, she did manage to put a lot of energy and enthusiasm into it, but honestly, I was just glad that the whole thing was over.

We stayed up and talked about the stories for a while, but we were all tired. I was convinced that I wouldn't sleep at all after Nagato-san's terrifying story, but I actually fell asleep rather easily, despite the strange surroundings.

But when I woke up in the middle of the night with Nagato-san's face hovering over me, my heart started punching my sternum like a boxer hitting a speed-bag.

Oh God! She's going to kill us all!

A/N: The story Kyon tells/steals is a real-world manga. Let's see how long it takes someone to figure out which one it is. It's really good, and I would recommend it if you're into horror/psychological writing.

For those who might be wondering, Koizumi's story is the summary of a short-story I wrote a while back.


	5. Chapter 5

Looking back on it, that was the moment the scary stories really started.

Normally, I wouldn't be surprised to find Nagato-san staring at me in my sleep. She's a little strange in that sense, and I would probably feel good that she was watching over all of us. But instead of wondering where I was, I immediately remembered the details of her story, which had been going through my head since she finished it, so I freaked out.

_She really does hate us!_ I thought.

I opened my mouth to scream or plead, I'm not sure which, though I do feel confident that if Nagato-san truly wanted to hurt us, neither would do much good. But her hand moved and quickly covered my mouth.

_She's going to smother me!_

But she didn't try to smother me, nor did she make any move to hurt me. She simply raised a single finger to her lips, obviously gesturing for me to be quiet.

It took me a while to calm down. Being woken up so suddenly, combined with the idea of nocturnal-killer-alien Nagato plaguing my thoughts, left me in a bewildered state. It was only after I noticed that Koizumi was just over Nagato-san's shoulder did I realize this was about something else completely.

When my heart stopped racing and my breathing evened out, Nagato-san lifted her hand. I looked around and noticed that Haruhi was still asleep.

But when my eyes focused on Asahina-san's bed, a terrible problem came to light, one which Koizumi confirmed with an airy whisper.

"Asahina-san is missing."

Nagato-san and Koizumi led me to one of the abandoned classrooms, the three of us trying to be as silent as possible not to wake Haruhi.

"I don't know why we need to do this. She's probably just gone to the bathroom," I whispered once we were in the classroom, which still had some old rusty desks strewn about.

"That was our first thought, but it's not likely," Koizumi answered. I was about to follow up, but Nagato-san spoke.

"Asahina Mikuru has been absent from the demarcated area for at least thirty-eight minutes twenty-four seconds. It takes the average human two minutes forty-seven seconds to use the bathroom."

That last part is really not information I need, Nagato-san.

"She's been gone since we've been awake, so we think something else may be going on," Koizumi added.

"She probably just got lost," I said, though now I was beginning to worry a little. We _were_ with Haruhi after all. "Let's just wake up Haruhi and search for her."

Koizumi smiled but shook his head no.

"Normally, that would be the appropriate action, but we have to keep in mind that her absence may be time-traveler-related, which would pose a problem if Suzumiya-san were to find out."

Of course. We're still in protect-Haruhi-from-the-truth mode here.

"Fine," I said, "let's search without her."

We left the camp area after confirming that Haruhi was still asleep and headed deeper into the building. We assumed Asahina-san hadn't gone toward the entrance because she shouldn't have had trouble finding her way back considering how close to the doors we were. We figured she had gotten turned around in the dark and headed deeper into the building, now unable to find her way out.

For some reason, all I could picture was cute Princess Mikuru sprinkling bread crumbs behind her as she walked.

I didn't have a flashlight since Haruhi had decided to toss mine down a flight of stairs, so I had to follow Nagato-san and Koizumi.

We stayed on the same floor, assuming Asahina-san wouldn't get so lost that she actually went down or up stairs. Eventually, we came to a place where the hallway split into two more paths, so we decided to split up.

I didn't mind splitting up because the building still didn't scare me, even though we _were_ currently investigating the disappearance of one of our friends. What I did mind was the fact that I had to go with Koizumi, though honestly, it made sense. No one in our group is as capable as Nagato-san, and since Koizumi is a normal human when he's not in closed space, maybe we powerless folk will find strength in numbers instead.

Still though, I'd much rather be with Nagato-san.

We agreed to meet back in this spot in thirty minutes whether we'd found Asahina-san or not. If we couldn't find her in half an hour, then we would need a new plan, perhaps one that involved supernatural powers.

As I watched Nagato-san disappear down the opposite hallway, her flashlight never wavering from the path directly in front of her, I started to feel a little nervous.

"Something wrong?" Koizumi asked, seeing the expression on my face.

I just shook my head.

"Here, you can hold the flashlight," he said, handing it to me.

I'm not a child, Koizumi.

Even though I was somewhat offended, I took the flashlight anyway. Maybe I would leave Koizumi in the dark somewhere deep in the building as punishment for. . . well. . . for being Koizumi.

Searching the abandoned school building really wasn't that fun or exciting. It was filled with empty rooms and debris, and at one point we came to a place where part of the roof had fallen through, which didn't make me feel safe at all.

After twenty minutes, we hadn't seen a trace of Asahina-san.

"Maybe she went to another time. Like on a mission or something," I suggested.

Koizumi didn't respond, but instead he made this annoying humming noise.

"What? Do you have a theory or something?" I asked, but if Koizumi responded, I didn't hear a word of it.

My attention focused on the classroom we had just walked into because, there, just on the other side of a couple of dilapidated desks, was a person, and it wasn't Asahina-san. I had never seen this person before in my life.

And to make matters worse, the person was transparent.

I was staring at a verified, 100% real ghost.

And I'm happy to say that I didn't run screaming, though not because I'm particularly brave. I'd like to say my time with the SOS Brigade has left me desensitized to the supernatural, but in truth, I didn't run because I was in shock. I didn't know how to react, and considering that he didn't move either, I think Koizumi had the same reaction (or lack thereof).

The ghost, which I could now tell was a guy, just stared at something on the wall, though in the darkness I couldn't see what it was nor did I plan to shine the light over there and find out. After a couple of seconds, he turned his head toward the windows and then disappeared.

I'm ready to leave now, Haruhi. It's officially been _one scary_ Halloween.

The ghost's disappearance brought me out of my stupor, but I still didn't freak out. I simply moved at a hastened pace away from the door and down the hallway a few yards, Koizumi staying right behind me.

"What was that?" he asked, though he knew the answer just as well as I did.

You're the one dressed up like an Oni. You should be an expert on spirits.

"We need to find Nagato-san," I said, and we took off down the hallway back toward the meeting place.

"I can't believe this place is really haunted," I said as we walked (or jogged, depending on who's telling the story).

"That does seem to be where the evidence is pointing," Koizumi replied.

Can't you just say, "yeah," like everyone else?

When we reached the meeting place, Nagato-san wasn't there, but she still had five minutes before we were supposed to meet. We waited, though neither of us felt calm enough to keep from pacing back and forth.

It was strange seeing Koizumi out of his normal cool-guy demeanor, but he was subject to whatever craziness was going on here same as me.

I started talking as we waited, really just wanting to keep myself distracted from thinking about the ghosts that could be waiting for us in any one of these rooms.

"Why am I not surprised that Haruhi would have us stay in the most-haunted place in the city?"

"I have two issues with that," Koizumi said.

Of course you do.

"One, we don't know that this is the most-haunted place in the city." I just ignored him. It was the most haunted place in my life right now, which was all that mattered. "And second, we have to consider that Haruhi may not have chosen a haunted building, but instead chose a normal building and _made_ it haunted."

She brought me to a dangerous abandoned building and then filled it with ghosts? Will this girl ever stop tormenting me?

"If I find out she did that to us, I'll. . . I'll. . ." but I had no idea what I'd do. The only weapon I have against Haruhi is passive-aggressively commenting about her.

"I'm not suggesting she did it on purpose, but after a night of telling scary stories in an abandoned school building, it's not far-fetched to think that her mind is racing while she dreams, bringing her thoughts into existence," Koizumi explained.

If zombies start showing up, I'm quitting (I don't know what I'm quitting, but I'm quitting). I don't have the proper survival gear to fight off a hoard of zombies, much less ghosts. Haruhi should have added "shotguns" to her list of requirement for the first annual SOS Brigade Halloween Campout.

I mulled over what Koizumi said about Haruhi causing this and stored it away in my mind, but at that moment I only cared about finding Nagato-san.

"How long has it been since we split up?" I asked. I had a watch on, but I didn't want to face the truth. It's better if Koizumi gives me the bad news; I'm used to him telling me things I don't want to hear.

"Forty-five minutes," he said.

God help us. And no Haruhi, I don't mean you.

Nagato-san was fifteen minutes late, which was unlike her.

"Where can she be?"

Koizumi shook his head at my question, and I knew what he was implying. Something must have happened to her if she failed to show up, but what could happen to our reliable resident alien? She can fight off pretty much anything.

But can she fight off ghosts? Can ghosts even fight?

I have no clue how the whole haunting thing works, so I guess it's possible that Nagato-san could be powerless before ethereal enemies. It's possible that she. . . that she could be. . . captured. . .

It hurt me to even consider that.

I think Koizumi was about to say something, but at that moment another ghost, this one a girl, walked out of the classroom only feet from us and stood in the middle of the hallway. She looked angry and started yelling, though I couldn't make out what she was saying. Her voice sounded like an echo, like something said in the past that just couldn't catch up to the present.

The only thing I garnered from the sound was that she was furious, apparently at us.

In her hand she had something that I couldn't make out in the dark. It was shaped like a tube, and just as I was trying to figure out what it was, she tossed back her arm and threw the object at us as hard as she could.

I cringed and covered my face to protect myself from whatever this ghost had decided to throw at me. I waited for the impact, but it never came, which was strange because it had been headed right at me.

I eventually chanced a look and noticed that the ghost was gone. I relaxed a bit and looked around for the object she had thrown, but it was nowhere to be found.

And after a confirming glance at Koizumi, who seemed just as bewildered and anxious as me, we decided not to bother looking for ghost-projectiles and run instead.

"If Haruhi's dreaming all of this into existence, we'll just wake her up and it'll end," I said as we moved through the hallways with cautious speed.

But when we got back to the camp area, Haruhi was missing.

Just what's going on here?


	6. Chapter 6

Barring the possibility that Haruhi is a sleepwalker, Koizumi and I had to consider the idea that she wasn't causing the ghosts.

I mean, who gets kidnapped by figments of their own imagination?

"How can she be awake? I thought you said she was doing this in her dreams?" I asked once I'd recovered from the shock of finding Haruhi missing.

"I'm really at a loss," was all Koizumi replied.

So here's our situation: Asahina-san, Nagato-san, and Haruhi are all missing; we're in a dark, dangerous abandoned building with one source of light; and there are ghosts. And possibly zombies. And I have to listen to Koizumi. And I'm _still_ in a cat costume.

Can things get any worse?

"We'll just have to search for them," Koizumi said.

Yeah, apparently it _can_ get worse.

"Look at it like this: it's our chance to be the heroes," he added.

He smiled, but I didn't smile back. Instead I glared at him.

I led the way because I had the flashlight, only because Koizumi wouldn't take it back. He insisted this was _my_ story, whatever that means.

We went back and searched the part of the building that Nagato-san was supposed to go through. Every time we opened a door, I was convinced there would be a ghost on the other side, ready to throw an ax or something equally deadly this time.

I was nervous as hell, but Koizumi had recuperated and was once again in his smirking cool-guy persona. At this point, I'd rather he drop the front and show a little fear. Maybe he'd seem a little more like a real person to me then.

We made it through Nagato-san's section without running into any ghosts, but we also didn't find any signs of the three girls.

"Just what do we do now?" I asked once we were back at the camp. Koizumi just gestured toward the stairs, and I knew exactly what he was thinking. "Why would they be downstairs?"

"The captured heroines are always taken to dank dungeons deep below the earth in stories like this," Koizumi said.

This is not a story!

Going down the flight of stairs was even worse than opening the doors, probably because I knew on some level that Koizumi's stupid storybook idea of how this would play out was likely accurate. If Haruhi had anything at all to do with this, then it would follow a formula. That was just her style.

But whether or not Haruhi was doing this was still debatable.

"Do you have anymore theories about what's going on?" I asked as we stepped onto the first landing area. As always, talking was my way of distracting myself from impending Haruhi-related doom.

"One," he said. I noticed we were both talking rather loudly now, probably subconsciously trying to scare away any ghosts that might be in the area. Who knows, maybe ghosts are skittish? "It could be that this isn't as accidental as I first made it out to be. Suzumiya-san could still be responsible for this, perhaps subconsciously, which means finding her is all the more important."

"If Haruhi did do this, then she can enjoy the fruits of her labor for all I care. I don't have a lot of sympathy for her when she puts me and everyone else through all this," I replied.

"You say that, but do you really mean it?"

I wasn't exactly sure what Koizumi was implying, but at that moment we came to a large room at the bottom of the building. It was probably some sort of maintenance room or maybe a meeting hall for the teachers. Either way, the double doors blocking our way were exactly the kind of thing that evil creatures like to hide behind.

I took a long look at Koizumi, hoping he might volunteer to open them, but he just grinned away in the glow of the flashlight. So I took hold of the handles and pushed the doors open.

On the other side were at least two dozen ghosts, all strewn about the room in different positions. Some were sitting, others were standing, but they all carried something in their hands. I didn't recognize the objects, but I knew one thing for sure: they were weapons of some sort.

The way they were situated in the room, it almost seemed like some kind of spectral office meeting. They were probably discussing how to go about killing the intruders: "_Oh yes, Mr. Deadguy, I did notice the stupid teenagers who are sleeping upstairs. Perhaps we should mangle them, or possibly just torture them until they cry and pass out. Well, if we can't come to an agreement, we'll just have to leave it as an open action item for this meeting_."

After Koizumi and I had stood in silence for a good minute just staring in shock, one of the ghosts turned toward the door.

In my panicked state, I couldn't really tell if he was looking at us, but my mind made the connection. Why else would it turn toward the door at that moment?

As brave as I'd been when facing ghosts up until this point, my courage failed me at the sight of so many of them carrying weapons (only Haruhi would go into overkill and give ghosts weapons). I turned and ran, dropping the flashlight in the process. My only solace was the sound of Koizumi's footsteps keeping pace with my own as we ran blindly into a dark corridor.

I glanced backward a few times to make sure we weren't being followed, which I couldn't tell because it was pitch black in the building without the flashlight, and my third glance backward resulted in me crashing headlong into an abandoned desk that someone had left out in the hall. My fall was made worse by the fact that Koizumi hit the same desk (he was right behind me) and came crashing down on top of me.

I pushed him off of me and stood up, but I didn't run. The accident had freed me from my reckless flight-instinct, and without a light to guide me, I decided not to chance another mishap.

I quickly realized what a big mistake dropping the flashlight was. The basement of the school building was almost completely dark, with the only sources of light coming from the occasional hole in the ceiling or wall. The moon was out, but the thin trickles of illumination coming in weren't enough to see each other by, much less help us get our bearings.

"Why'd you run?" Koizumi asked after gathering himself from the tumble over the desk.

"Because I really don't want police officers finding my corpse down here with fake cat ears on my head."

"That probably wouldn't happen. According to Suzumiya-san's story, the ghosts will likely turn us into zombies."

"Then I don't want my _undead_ corpse walking around in this thing," I said, gesturing to the tail, not realizing that there was no way Koizumi could see what I was doing in this dark. "Why'd _you_ run?"

"Just following the leader."

I hate you, Koizumi.

I went ahead and took the cat ears off; I'm not really sure why I kept them on for so long anyway. I took the bell off too so it wouldn't give away our position to the ghost army.

We didn't know what to do without a light, and as Koizumi talked incessantly about options, all I could think about was the possibility that we were surrounded by ghosts at this very moment and didn't know.

"We'll just put our hand on a wall and follow it. If we walk long enough, we'll eventually come to the stairs again," he suggested.

"Yeah, and what about the ghosts?"

"Maybe they won't bother us."

That's your great plan, Koizumi? Walk around blind and helpless, hoping the bad guys don't get us?

Some heroes we are.

Before we could put our plan into action, though, a sound started echoing down the empty halls. It sounded like a heavy pounding or crashing, and I pictured ghosts building some kind of zombie-fabrication machine.

"Let's see what's making that noise."

Koizumi, that's the worst plan I've ever heard.

And yet we did it anyway, because that's what the SOS Brigade does. We formulate the worst plans possible and then put them into action (Spend the night in an abandoned building? Check. Split up? Check. Let Haruhi talk us into this kind of thing? Check). It's kind of our thing.

Luckily, the sound was coming in the opposite direction of where we ran into the spectral study hall, and I really didn't want to go back _there_. After fumbling through the dark for a while, we finally arrived at the source of the noise. There was just enough light in the area to tell the pounding was coming from the other side of a door.

"Open it," Koizumi whispered.

I sighed. Fine. Let's do this. Let's do the stupid thing that gets the teenagers killed in every horror movie ever made. I'll be that guy.

I twisted the handle, feeling a click that signaled that I had just unlocked it, and before I could even think about moving, the door swung open and a weight fell on me.

"Ghost!" I yelled without thinking. I struggled against the weight that was now struggling back for a few seconds before something occurred to me.

Ghosts don't weigh anything.

The idea that it could be a zombie crossed my mind, but then I felt the. . . um. . . "chest" pressing against my own, and I calmed down.

"Who is this?" I asked the dark figure now clawing to get to its feet.

Please let it be Asahina-san.

"Kyon, you moron."

Damn. I never get what I want.

Haruhi pulled herself up in the dark, and I could see the details of her costume cast against what little light was seeping in behind her.

"What are you doing down here?" I asked once I was on my feet again.

"What am I doing? What are _you_ doing! I woke up and you guys were all gone, and I assumed you had gone searching for paranormal activity without your brigade chief. So I went looking for you to rain divine punishment down on each of you when I fell through the floor and landed in that room."

I don't know if she pointed to the room, but I glanced around inside anyway. There was definitely a hole in the ceiling and a lot of debris on the ground.

"Are you alright?" I asked.

"Yeah. I sprained my wrist a little, but I'm fine."

See Haruhi, what did I tell you about this place? You're lucky you didn't get seriously injured.

"My flashlight broke when I fell, so I've been locked in that room in the dark for like half an hour, just pounding on that door."

As Haruhi told the story of her harrowing experience (which was her fault by the way), I could only feel relieved that she wasn't kidnapped by ghosts or zombies.

"Who's with you?" she asked.

"Just me," Koizumi responded.

"Where have you guys been? I have the mind to demote the both of you for leaving the campsite."

You can't demote me, Haruhi. I'm already at the bottom rung.

"We, uhh. . ." I began, but I didn't know how to explain our whereabouts without recounting a lot of ghost-related encounters.

"Kyon-kun needed to go to the bathroom, so he woke me up to go with him because he didn't have a flashlight."

Of course Koizumi was on top of it, ready with a lie. It wasn't even a very good one either; if I had really woken up and needed to go to the bathroom, I would have just taken his flashlight without asking.

"But where are Yuki and Mikuru?"

"I don't know," I said immediately, which was both a lie and the truth. I had no idea where they were _right now_, but we had an idea just why they were missing.

"Hmm, we'll have to form a search party to find them."

That's exactly what we were doing when we found you!

"Give me your flashlight," she said.

"It's broken."

"What? How?"

Once again I drew a blank. What was I supposed to say, "We were scared by ghosts, and I dropped it while we were running away like frightened children"?

"Well, when we heard you beating on the door, we hurried to see what was happening, and on the way Kyon-kun tripped on a desk and dropped it," Koizumi said.

Thanks a lot, Koizumi. Why couldn't _you_ have been the one who dropped the flashlight in this false scenario?

"Ultra punishment!" she yelled out in the dark, and even though I couldn't see it, I could sense the presence of a stiff accusing finger just inches from my face.

You could have poked my eye out with that thing, Haruhi.

"Hey, out of the flashlights the three of us brought, you're responsible for breaking _two_ of them."

That started an argument that really wasn't going to go anywhere, yet I argued it anyway. The whole time, though, I could feel Koizumi nudging me with his elbow. He obviously wanted something, and it took me a while to remember just why _we_ were down here in the first place.

"Hey, Haruhi. You know ghosts aren't real, right?" I said.

"Why are you asking such a stupid question? Did you get scared? I heard you screaming 'Ghosts!' when you opened the door."

Do we really need to bring that up?

I ignored the insult and continued pressing her.

"That's not an answer."

"Well, we can't really say for sure right now, but the SOS Brigade is sure to find hard evidence in the near future."

That's not the response I wanted to hear.

"But do you _really_ believe?"

Haruhi was quiet for a while. I could tell she didn't like me pushing the subject like this, but I had to.

"Maybe. Probably not."

Was that enough? Would everything go back to normal now that Haruhi had (kinda) denied the existence of ghosts?

It's worked in the past.

I felt bad because I knew she didn't want to admit something like that, so I let it drop. Her answer would have to be enough.

We decided to make our way out of the basement using Koizumi's terrible "follow the wall" plan, and I hoped that we would find Asahina-san and Nagato-san waiting back at the campsite when we arrived.

But as we walked down the dark hallways, Haruhi now in the lead, I quickly realized that our plan to get Haruhi to deny the ghosts out of existence hadn't worked.

At the third classroom we passed, I glanced inside and noticed the faint visage of a ghost cast in a beam of moonlight near an old filing cabinet. I tried to act normally so that Haruhi would just keep walking, but she stopped and turned around.

"Was there someone in that room?" she asked, and I felt my heart jump. Here it was—the veil was about to be pulled back and Haruhi would find out everything, not just about ghosts, but espers, aliens, and time-travelers too. "Mikuru? Yuki?" she called out.

"There's no one in there," I said, and Koizumi quickly agreed with me, perhaps too quickly. Even I thought we were acting a little suspicious.

Haruhi started walking back toward the classroom door. I tried to get in her way, but even in the dark she managed to dodge me. Before I could think of anything else to do, she had poked her head around the corner.

I cringed, wondering just how she would react. I'm not sure what Koizumi did, but I figured he was experiencing all kinds of panic. His job in the Organization is damage control, so I assume Haruhi discovering the existence of ghosts while standing right next to him would constitute a failure on his part.

The silence as Haruhi looked inside the room was excruciating.

Then finally she said, "Guess I'm seeing things," and started walking down the hallway again.

Koizumi and I looked inside once Haruhi had moved.

The ghost had vanished just in time.

We caught up to her, but even though we got lucky, we knew we had to do something. If she saw another one, she wouldn't talk herself out of it so easily.

Every step down the hallway felt fragile, as though this entire shame we've built up to protect Haruhi from the truth was about to fall down as a result of even the slightest misstep. I myself wouldn't mind seeing the lies come to an end, but I know an esper, alien, and time-traveler who would be rather upset.

But we really only had two options: one, convince Haruhi that ghosts didn't exist and get her to undo what she'd done, or two, lead her out of the building without her noticing that she had just happened to populate the place with spirits. I'd already failed at the first, and I wasn't sure the second was even possible.

We seemed to be getting lucky as we passed by room after room, which either had nothing in them or were too dark to see inside.

Then I made a mistake. I slowed down and distanced myself from Haruhi so that I could whisper to Koizumi without her hearing.

"What are we going to do?"

But he didn't get to respond.

"I bet this is the way out," Haruhi said, and although I couldn't see what she was doing, I heard the sound of her turning a door handle.

At that same moment, I felt my foot crunch broken glass and kick a metal tube down the hallway.

It was the flashlight I had dropped. We were back where we started, and Haruhi was about to open the double doors to the ghost stronghold.

I rushed forward, though at that point I wasn't sure what I planned to do, just stop her by any means necessary. It didn't matter though, because I was too late. She flung the doors open without another thought.

A flash of pure white filled the building at the instant Haruhi opened the doors. The flash was so bright that our eyes, which had been staring at pitch black for a long time, immediately went temporarily blind.

All I could see was a series of blurs and colorful explosions. I closed my eyes and rubbed them, knowing that it would only make them worse but not really caring.

"What was that?" Haruhi yelled, and I could tell by the way she spoke that she was blinded too.

I didn't have a response for her because I knew what it was. It was our doom. The ghosts were making their move, and they had begun the assault with some kind of spectral-blind-your-victims-technique. So now that we were helpless, they could just swoop in and end it quick, no running or chasing required.

"Lightning," Koizumi said. Even in a situation like this one Koizumi kept making up lies, and this one wasn't any good either. It's not even raining, and we're in the basement.

And yet Haruhi bought it, just as she always did.

As my eyes slowly started coming out of their temporary daze, I noticed something moving toward us from the room Haruhi had just opened. In the blur, all I could see was a dim light meandering in our general direction, like the fires of the underworld moving with ethereal malaise.

Are you happy, Haruhi? Here comes our funeral march, all because you wanted to be scared.

"What's that?" she said once she noticed the light too. Neither of us answered her, so we all just stared in silence. With Haruhi here, running seemed futile. She would never follow me like Koizumi had. If she did follow, it would be to grab me and drag me back to the front lines.

In the darkness I felt Haruhi's hand grab onto my arm. It was shaking.

It seemed to take forever, and my heart sped up with every second that passed. Let's just be done with it already.

Eventually the light stopped right in front of us, the bright beam blinding us to whatever might be behind it.

This was it. This was the moment. What kind of evil apparition would reveal itself?

"Kyon-kun!"

Why does the evil apparition sound like our pure, sweet Asahina-san? It must be a trick.

But it wasn't a trick, and after they lowered the light, I felt relieved to see Asahina-san and Nagato-san standing safely on the other side.

Haruhi took her hand away from my arm.

"Yuki, Mikuru! Where have you been?" Haruhi asked, immediately taking the flashlight from Nagato-san.

Asahina-san stumbled over her words, much like I had, but Nagato-san was ready with the same lie Koizumi had provided. "Bathroom."

Haruhi grumbled for a while about everyone going to the bathroom, but she seemed happy to have her brigade all together again.

I insisted that we leave, and with a flashlight, we didn't have much trouble finding the stairs and heading back up to the campsite. As Haruhi took off in the lead, Nagato-san pulled on my shirt sleeve. We paused just long enough to let Haruhi get out of earshot.

"The anomaly has been resolved. Quantum temporal regions have been reset to reflect the most probable parameters from the pre-incident time-plane."

"Uhh, ok." As always, I wasn't sure what Nagato-san was trying to say, but I could take a guess. "Does that mean you took care of the ghosts?"

She nodded.

We caught up to Haruhi, and I felt better knowing we didn't have to keep her from actually discovering one of the ghosts from her story.

Back on the first floor, I noticed that the sun was beginning to rise on the horizon. None of us really felt like trying to sleep anymore after such a crazy night, so we managed to talk Haruhi into letting us go home.

It was over. Or so I thought.

It felt _so_ good to take those steps out onto the sidewalk in front of the building. Or at least it did feel good, right up to the point in which Haruhi slapped me hard in the back of the head.

"What was that for?" I whined, rubbing the quickly-forming knot on the back of my skull.

"Mega-Ultra-Punishment!" she yelled.

"What for?"

"You took off your costume!" It took me a moment to remember that down in the dark of the basement I had taken off the ears and bell out of frustration, and Haruhi hadn't noticed until we stepped out into the light of the rising sun.

"You'll just have to go back for it," she added. "But don't worry, we'll go with you. I figure that as long as we're here, we should check this place for supernatural activity. We'll make a day of it!"

I forget, is euthanasia legal in Japan? Because at this point, I'm seriously considering it, either for me or for a certain brigade leader I know.


	7. Chapter 7

After a long argument, I managed to talk Haruhi out of making us go back into the abandoned school building, and I got to spend my Saturday sleeping in peace at home.

But I didn't find out what had truly happened in the abandoned school building until Monday.

I tried calling Koizumi, Nagato-san, and Asahina-san on Sunday, but I never got a response from any of them. I thought about riding over to Nagato-san's house, but I knew that if they weren't answering the phone, that likely meant they were with their respective higher-ups giving a formal report of our escapades the other night.

I bet being friends with Haruhi requires a lot of paperwork for those three.

During class Monday, Haruhi seemed distracted, and she wasn't in the clubroom when I arrived, which was fine by me because it gave the four sane members of the SOS Brigade time to talk about insane things, namely ghosts.

And as it turns out, it wasn't Haruhi causing the ghosts after all.

You're innocent on this charge, Haruhi. We'll consider this the exception to the rule.

The ghosts were actually Asahina-san's fault, or well, more specifically, the fault of time-travelers.

She sat me down when I arrived in the clubroom and started a very nervous explanation of the whole thing, and judging by the way Nagato-san and Koizumi reacted, they had already heard it all.

"That building we entered was actually a classified information. Um, I mean. . ."

Great, Asahina-san's time-traveler censorship is on. This explanation is likely to leave me more confused than ever.

"It's like a safe-house for bad guys. I noticed it when we first entered."

Safe-house for bad guys? I had no clue where this was going, but it did explain why Asahina-san was acting so strangely when we first arrived for the campout.

"The ghosts you saw were actually members of classified information, um, I mean. . . they're like. . . people who time travel illegally. They can't use a TPDD, so they have to find illegal ways to go back in time, and many of those ways leave imprints on the past."

I stared at her for a moment. I could tell Asahina-san wanted some confirmation that I was following her.

"I don't understand," I said.

She paused for a moment to think, and the sight of her gently tapping her finger on her chin was so cute. Even when she has serious business to deal with, she can't help but do things in an innocent way.

"Ah! Do you remember when I told you time traveling is like adding an extra page into a flip book?"

I nodded. She told me that the day she revealed her true identity to me. I'll never forget that.

"Well, a TPDD takes the page back out when we're through. But people who time travel illegally, it's like they drew themselves into the flip books right on top of the normal pages. When they go to leave, they erase the picture they drew of themselves."

"And sometimes they don't erase all the way?" I asked as I started to put it together.

She nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah!"

"So what we were seeing, what we thought were ghosts. . ."

". . . were just imprints of time travelers who had stayed in that building at some point," she finished.

Now I felt stupid knowing I was running from imprints. At least I felt a little justified when I thought they were ghosts.

"But wait. They reacted to us. Attacked. . . threw things at us."

Asahina-san shook her head. "That was a coincidence. The imprints can't physically interact with this world. They just act out a moment from a different time period, usually only a few seconds or so. They're like. . . like . . ."

"Holograms," Koizumi suggested.

"Yeah, like holograms. They were reacting to something that happened in another time period, and you just thought they were reacting to you."

I thought back to the encounters we'd had in the school building. Most of the ghosts had ignored us completely. The one that had thrown something at us, well, it had seemed like she was mad at us, but I guess it's possible we were just seeing the transparent reenactment of some past time-traveler related dispute. That would explain why that object of hers never hit me.

"So we were never in any real danger?" I asked.

Koizumi grinned. "Our panic actually put us in more danger than the imprints causing the panic. We really could have gotten hurt running through those dark halls."

Oh, _now_ you think that place was dangerous, Koizumi. Where were you when I was making all my protests the other night?

"And of course, the danger that Suzumiya-san would see one was still very real," he added.

I'm not worried about that kind of danger.

"Leave it to Suzumiya-san to uncover such a place. It's rather amazing."

I don't really think it's that impressive, Koizumi.

"Okay, I think I get it," I began, "but where did you go?"

As it turns out, if we had simply taken the time to walk out the front doors when we were searching for her, we would have found Asahina-san immediately and most of that craziness wouldn't have happened.

After noticing that we had walked into an imprint goldmine, Asahina-san decided to sneak away in the middle of the night to contact her superiors. She was on the front lawn the entire time, and our stupid assumption that she had gotten lost somewhere was what resulted in Haruhi almost finding out.

Oh, and as for Nagato-san, when she ran across her first imprint while searching for Asahina-san, she immediately realized what was going on. Knowing that Koizumi and I weren't in any danger from the apparitions, she decided that getting rid of them so that Haruhi didn't accidently run across one should be her priority. So instead of returning to the meeting place, she went outside where she figured Asahina-san would be making contact and receiving instructions on what actions to take. The flash of light that blinded the three of us down in the basement was Nagato-san resetting the space-time continuum or something.

She explained it all, but of course she used Nagato-speak, so I have no clue how it works. It was something about isolating the area and making it reflect the quantum mechanics of the rest of the world.

I need a degree in physics just to talk to Nagato-san sometimes.

And there you have it. The whole adventure was really just the product of a glitch in the universe and a lot of miscommunication and assumptions on our part. It sounds like the plot to a really bad comedy show; all we needed was a ludicrous chase scene and some bad dialogue.

Asahina-san finished by mentioning that her superiors would be sending people to monitor the place in case the illegal time-travelers ever came back.

When she mentioned that, I remembered walking into that large meeting hall at the bottom of the building. I remembered seeing the weapons they were all holding.

"Asahina-san, is this group a threat to you and your superiors?"

"Classified information," she said, but I could tell by the way her voice faltered and she dropped her head that it was true.

I looked around the room, first to Asahina-san, then Nagato-san, and even Koizumi.

Don't worry Asahina-san, if anything seriously threatens you, threatens any of you, Haruhi and I will go into genuine hero-mode. It'll just take a couple words to get her charging to the rescue with all the power in the universe behind her.

I would have liked to have told them that, but about that time Haruhi walked in. We all had to go back to acting normal, which meant serving tea for Asahina-san, reading for Nagato-san, and board games for Koizumi and me.

In my attempts to be nonchalant and unsurprised by her entrance, I didn't bother looking up from the game of chess spread out on the table, so I didn't know she was standing behind me until _it_ slapped down on the table in front of me, tipping my king over like I had surrendered.

_It_ was a copy of "Rabbit Doubt," the manga I had stolen my story from for the campout.

I looked up at Haruhi, who had two neutron stars burning just behind her pupils.

"Super mega ultra punishment!"

The sheer number of adjectives in that phrase makes me sick to my stomach.

And that is how I ended up wearing a new _pink_ cat costume to class for an entire day.

I won't go into detail about it, because honestly, that was the scariest story of all.

*

A/N: Well, that's it. I hope you enjoyed it. You might check out my other two Haruhi fics if you liked this one. The others are similar--short, fun little adventures that Haruhi drags the SOS Brigade on.

I have another Haruhi fic I'll probably post later this week. It's going to be a oneshot that's completely different from my other stories. I also have an idea for a much longer fic that would actually get into the main plot of the story, but whether or not I write that one depends on how much time I have. Thanks for reading.


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